Are dices necessary to RPG?
I guess the answer is no, since Amber prooves it. But Amber is very specific, with characters being very powerful and all... The imagination of the players and the multiplicity of possibilities can be a good alternative to dices and randomness when the characters are powerful. IMO, it's only replacing dice randomness by some kind of chaos, the same chaos that occurs during free-forms. The interaction between people is not something you can really predict. But this is not enough for most of the games... I like Amber but I do think it can't be played with every group of players.
Is it fair to use Dices or does it spoil the Fun?
Well, as long as the rules you used are judged "fair" by the players and
the GM, I think everything is fine. The rule-system is like some common
laws with which every participant must agree.
As far as I know, most of the groups I played with are quite happy with
dices, they sometimes curse their "bad luck" or shout happily when they got
a lucky roll, but they never told me that Dices are a bad basis to settle
RPG situations.
As long as the "mathematical" model that was chosen is "common knowledge"
and accepted by all, then it's OK.
Who dictates the story: the GM, the Players or the Dice?
Good question! It feels to me like the RPG embodiments of the
Fate/Mastery/Luck runes.
IMO, nobody really dictates the story. Nobody really owns it. It's rather a
conjunction of forces... which eventually produces Fun.
If you can tell in advance what's exactly going to happen, then it's boring...
As a GM, I usually enjoy being surprised by my Players or by the unexpected
(let'sd rather say unlikely) results of a dice... Unexpected and unlikely
events happen in life, and dices enables them to happen in RPG too.
In Amber nothing is really random. You might eventually find a good reason
(or a good plot) to explain anything. In a way, this has metaphysical
implications.
In Glorantha, I think chance does exist. I mean some think happen because
they were foretold. Some thing happen because they were willed. Others...
just happen... They weren't expected and don't have a clear cause. Some
criticals of fumbles can lead to interesting situations. Ok, nothing
"logical" justifies those events... but randomness isn't supposed to be
reasonnable. And yes, some bad or good rolls can spoil a good story... but
I'm confident that the Fate/GM can take over the Luck/Dice when really
needed.
Is it logical that the adventurers can evaluate the risks they're taking?
It's more logical than knowing nothing about what you're capable of...
I don't mind players calculating their odds. Usually, they don't exactly
what modifiers I'll use and the stats of the enemies they're facing... So
their evaluation is imperfect.
IMO it doesn't spoil Fun, especially because they don't take time to
min-max everything, they just try to optimize quickly their course of
action: it's the usual way to solve a decision-problem.
Can a RPG character have free-will?
Well, I'm sure there aren't any right answer to this question. I often
choose this as a main theme of my campaigns. The characters are just
"ordinary people" who happen to lead an extraordinary life (or at least
part of it is).
Were they fated to become "adventurers"? Did they choose to become so? Is
it just "luck"?
It's the "Why me?" theme... and it leads to interesting moral
considerations: do the characters really fell that they deserve what they
get? that they get what they deserve? That their choices are relevant? that
they are special people or that anybody "in their place" would have done
the same?
I especially like the interaction all this has with prophecies, Gods and
illumination.
In my opinion, prophecies are "tools" that "Fate" uses to ensure some
specific outcome. A kind of subtle self-confirming prediction.
Take a usual group of "adventurers", give them some quest and let them know
that they will succeed "for sure". It's written somewhere. They can even
now eactly how they're supposed to succeed. To most people, this would
sound like good news. But to some, it appears as the complete negation of
free will... you're just some kind of tool. Is it really thrilling to be
"fated to save the world"?
Other question: do the Gods need people to be free-willed? are the Gods free-willed themselves? Is (for the Gods) forecasting the future possible or impossible because Chaos and "Luck" interfere or impossible because it would just take "too much Time" to make a really acurate prediction (I like this one, because it's very much like Time/the Compromise prevents the powers of Gods from being too much efficient)?
What's the connection between illumination and free-will? The fact that you can actually become illuminated "unwillingly" is revealing... but IMO illumination implies a higher level of awareness of Fate/Luck/Mastery.
How to make rules for Fate/Luck/Mastery-like effects?
If you decide one of the character is "lucky", it means you have to
eliminate some randomness to "help" him succeed. It's not very
"random-like"...
But in a way, to be "lucky" isn't "random-like" since it means you got some
kind of permanent good charm... it sounds rather like Fate or Mastery to
me.
The Mastery effect is definitively something like free-will IMO. You do
your best and really want something. And it happens. Could be Fate-related
too.
For Fate, it's even worse because it 's kind of hard for a GM to decide the
fate of a character without boring the player... but if the player has a
hand in the choice, then it's more mastery then fate.
To put it shortly, this kind of notions can not be easily modelized by the
usual (mathematical) rule-system. That's why they're a problem and "a
mystery". That's why each GM has his/her own approach to all this. IMO,
mixing up the three elements is the alchemy of RPG.
Xavier
spinat_at_poly.polytechnique.fr (Xavier SPINAT)
End of The Glorantha Digest V5 #558
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